High-harmonic spectroscopy of light-driven nonlinear anisotropic anomalous Hall effect in a Weyl semimetal
Amar Bharti, M. S. Mrudul, Gopal Dixit
Abstract
Weyl semimetals are promising quantum materials that offer unique topological properties. Lately, it has been shown that laser-driven electron dynamics have characteristic signatures in two-dimensional and three-dimensional Dirac semimetals. The transition from Dirac to Weyl semimetal requires the breaking of either inversion or time-reversal symmetry. The present paper shows that the laser-driven electron dynamics in a Weyl semimetal with broken time-reversal symmetry has intriguing features in its high-harmonic spectrum. It is found that the parity and magnitude of the nonzero Berry curvature's components control the direction and strength of the anomalous current, which leads to the generation of the anomalous odd harmonics. We demonstrate that the nontrivial topology of the Berry curvature in time-reversal symmetry-broken quantum materials can be probed by measuring the polarization of the emitted anomalous odd harmonics. Our findings unequivocally illustrate that laser-driven electron dynamics leads to the generation of nonlinear anisotropic anomalous Hall effect in time-reversal symmetry-broken quantum materials on an ultrafast timescale.